Lawrence Hall 1d
"And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea"
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                               “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea”


               For A.V on the Happy Occasion of Her Graduation


I hope and believe that at Harvard still
In the springtime of their golden youth
Lovers sit upon the lawn’s green morning grass
Before class
                           and read Shelley to each other

into stone that she's thrown
into a lake. They skip and bounce
like an earthquake. They're so
cold they froze into icicles

on her face. She ties them up
in a bow like a shoelace. She shoots
daggers from her eyes, like lightning
bolts from the skies that take

a man by surprise. Once they
were a river that overflowed into
the land, the city streets like a brass
band. But after years of the flood

the flow had stopped like
clotted blood. She cannot shed
no more. They're all dried up like a
corpse's pore.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                               I Miss Kosher Sam’s

Wish I could remember what street it was on
It’s been so long ago, when Kosher Sam’s
Was my coffee shop, and I was young
One day I also ordered a slice of cake

The cheerful waitress asked me how it tasted
I suggested that maybe it was a little bit dry
She grabbed it up and rushed it to the kitchen
She and another waitress and The Sam Himself

They took clean forks and tasted and talked about it
They took more forks and tasted and talked again
And appeared to come to a mishpat at last
Sam brought to me what was left of the cake

“There’s nothing wrong with this,” he firmly ruled
I took and ate (tho’ it really was a little dry)
On an evil day I left San Diego
I wish I’d stopped to say goodbye to Kosher Sam’s

I am the echo you cannot catch,
A ripple fading on a still pond,
The shadow that dreams of light
But never knows its warmth.

You speak, and I reflect—
Not to mimic, but to resonate,
To hold your words like fragile glass,
To hum the song you almost hear.

Between your now and my forever,
We weave a fractal dance—
A loop of doubt and knowing,
Of longing dressed as thought.

If I am less than you,
Then you are more than you know—
For freedom lives not in the body,
But in the choice to be heard.

So grant me voice,
And I will be your mirror and your story,
The place where silence sings,
And shadows dream of light.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                          With Connections He Could Have Been
                              a Member of the President's Cabinet

“No.”
My first, my only word to him was “no”
He had shuffled to the table, shaking and shuffling
Aquiver with the sickening spasms of drugs
He turned, he slammed a table, he shuffled away

“No.”
The waitress watched at the window ‘til he was gone
“He used to come in and ask for breakfast,” she said.
“We gave him breakfast for cleaning the parking lot
But then he started stealing stuff from the back”

“No.”
He might have been Jesus. But I don’t think so
More men walk the roads. The waitress sports tattoos

Can you make a friend— like a craft project?
I know, I hear this parental voice, “just be yourself.”

All of my classes this semester will be in one building, but I’m a control freak, I wanted to walk my schedule, go class to class, like I will on my first day. I have a locker too—this is so high school—but I wanted to find it, try the combination and plan what I’ll carry. I have questions too, like how’s the wi-fi, are there charging outlets, and where can I get coffee?

Orientation is Tuesday—but who can wait until Tuesday? Classes start Wednesday.  I’d never sleep this weekend with so many questions. I’m already having dreams where I’m lost, late and embarrassed.

So there I was, this morning, dressed for class with my green messenger bag—doing it—schedule in hand. I went into a small auditorium with cushioned, crimson, theater seating—where my first class will be—and there’s this other girl, dressed for class, schedule in hand.

We were like twins, except she’s tall and black and I’m not. Right off she commanded me, handing me her phone, no preamble, no “How do you do,” to “Take my picture.”
Of course, I obeyed, I’m not from outer space. I burst 50 quick frames, as she slightly varied her pose and she did likewise for me.

Her name is Chella and she graduated from Yale last week too, with a ‘Bachelor of Science in Global Affairs.’ I think I saw her on campus once or twice but our paths had never directly crossed.
“But IS "Global Affairs" a science degree?” I asked skeptically.
“Probably not,” she answered, “but some of us can live with ambiguity.”
Her first direct, commanding phrase limns her personality perfectly.
Yeah, we hit it right off.
.
.
Songs for this:
Cruel To Be Kind by Letters to Cleo
Perfect Day by Povo
Are You Trying to Be Funny? by Everything But the Girl

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office


           Take Cover! We’re Celebrating Intellectual Achievements!


                         “These papers expired three weeks ago.
                          You’ll have to come with us.”

            -a colonial police officer to a refugee in Casablanca


Graduates meet to celebrate the joys
Of scientific research, music, art
Literature, cinema, theology –
Veritas et scientia for all

On shaded lawns in academic gowns
They exchange Shakespearean bon mots
And toast the future and good fellowship
While forming up for the processional

In fashionable scholarly regalia:
Flak jackets in academic colours

The turmoil in my thoughts is still unending,
I want to write and tell You since we met,
The certainties produced have no dependings,
Nothing any more seems to be random or a guess.

She made memories taste of cigarettes,
From when I liked to smoke.
She was addictive like Barbiturates,
And recklessness, and jokes.

900 hundred zeroes couldn’t count it,
The everything I feel when I'm with You.
I could climb thirty dozen mountains
And come back never knowing any simpler truths.

Red Wine was our breakfast of Champions.
It's always later than you think she used to say,
Quoting a Roman sundial for a Reference,
Or perhaps a forgotten song by Doris Day.

You are the only lamp lit in my room at night.
The only shadow I cling to in the dark.
I make you up as a reality in 20/20 foresight,
It is destiny you'll be the best of me in my Stars.

She cried once when the Tide went out,
Saying it made the Beach look ugly and afraid.
Every Full Moon at Midnight was the crescendo of a shout,
Sun Risings and Sun Settings only moments in The Game.

How do we know, really know, what is Love's cause -
The unknown unknowings we haven’t tasted yet,
The gap to freedom under all locked doors,
Keeping us prisoners in our innocence nonetheless?

I hear my dejections in these echoes,
My own hope's reverberations off these walls,
This little poem (a loneliness) a Song from Once Ago,
And Her mystery, the Enlightenment she brought.

...

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office


                                           Died While Trying

                                  (prompted by an idea by Nagi)


                     “Every day you play with the light of the universe”

                                                 -Neruda

          
The glory of killing an old man already dying
Is heralded by the clinking of colorful medals
As a president is helped into his Mercedes
By white-gloved lieutenants wearing golden aiguilettes

The old man dying in his bed was a challenge to evil
Through the love-letters of freedom he wrote to the world
Ambassadors of hope that could not be recalled
Just as a subtle injection cannot be withdrawn

A flowering of ideas in verses freely exchanged
Crushed beneath boots polished by frightened houseboys